Sure, staying active is good for you and keeps you healthy and all that good stuff that we like to think is motivation enough in itself. But when it comes to busting your bum at the gym 3 times a week or going for that jog at 6:30 in the morning, sometimes the vague lure of “healthiness” just isn’t strong enough to pull you out of bed.

A free smoothie, though? Mmmmm. Now, that just might do the trick.

Nexercise is a fitness app that uses gamification and social networking to increase motivation. Log your physical activity to earn points, medals and random prizes as you go. And the more you work out, the better your chances a winning a Nexercise Grand Prize at the end of each month. Instant gratification = wait, working out is fun?

Nexercise also uses a social element to engage users through social media. This lets users interact with each other, form a community and, most importantly, compete for bragging rights! They were looking for ways to explore this aspect further when they came across Socialize and thought, “Why spend weeks doing this in-house when we can pop in Socialize’s SDK in minutes?”

We caught up with Ben Young of Nexercise at MoDevEast, which we sponsored, to get his thoughts on Socialize and why the social aspect of an app is so powerful. Check it out:

Ben also took the time to answer a few more questions about his experience with Socialize.

1) What drew you to Socialize?

Socialize had a lot of the features we were looking for from a social aspect. The fact that the platform is continuing to evolve is like giving us an extended development team.

2) Which feature is your favourite?

There really is no one feature we like, it’s the culmination of both engagement and discovery that makes the SDK really promising.

3) How did you find the process of implementing it?

We found it straightforward. We are doing a deep integration, so the Socialize tech team has been really helpful working with us.

4) Would you recommend Socialize to other developers? Why?

Yes, it’s easy to get started and the development team is awesome to work with.

5) What other Socialize features would you like to see in the future?

Push notifications when users engage with entities—we are excited that’s coming soon . As for future stuff, we’d like to see really cool APIs around where we could suggest users and entities based on similar interests and social engagement patterns.

Thanks, Ben!

We love seeing Socialize in action and the insight we get from developer feedback is invaluable. Download the SDK for yourself and tell us what you think! You just might be the next app featured in our app showcase.